Posted on the other site too, but this is the same Senate that confirmed KBJ except we have one extra vote this time around so confirming a good replacement should be trivial.
That was before this though:
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Sure, but even with that weâre back to having 50 votes again. Super easy confirmation.
No chance she retires. These people all have god complexes. They think they are single handedly holding together the nation.
The irony is thereâs no one who could fuck up the nation more by dying at an inopportune time.
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I wouldnât call anything relying on Sinema (not to mention needing all of the 50 senators to stay healthy) âsuper easyâ.
That said, itâs still likely to be easier now than next year, so she should retire.
Though I do agree with Clovis that that has a very low likelihood of happening.
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Sinema is pretty much a slam dunk on judges. The health thing is a perpetual problem but an extremely low percentage event so itâs safe to ignore it for our purposes here. If everyoneâs healthy and they bring someone up thatâs as far left as Sotomayor/KBJ theyâre a lock to get 50 votes and I donât think thereâs much dispute there.
If thatâs true, then youâre correct. But with re-election out of the picture I think sheâs much more of a wild card. I donât trust her as far as I can throw her, and well, with my bad knee, I shouldnât be throwing anybody.
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I didnât know that about Soros and Popper. Interesting.
My read is that Lincoln saw mob violence as a symptom of weakening institutions, which would make the nation vulnerable when the right asshole came along:
Distinction will be his paramount object, and although he would as willingly, perhaps more so, acquire it by doing good as harm; yet, that opportunity being past, and nothing left to be done in the way of building up, he would set boldly to the task of pulling down.
It was this along with the coincidence of the word âtrumpâ at the end that got me sent to read the speech in the first place.
I think Popper was concerned with defending society from âintoleranceâ by means similar to Lincoln (education, morality, the constitution, law), but I doubt he had a real solution or that there is one.
I could have it wrong but I think he was ok with any choice of government as long as there was a way to change it when it didnât work. What was non-negotiable was a mechanism for self-correction. You have to be able to get rid of the guy if a Hitler comes along. He understood that could be a problem. There doesnât seem to be a sure-fire way to avoid an eventual collapse of democracy.
This might be the issue Godel wanted to bring up at his immigration hearing. Fortunately for him Einstein was there to shut him up. Einstein had thought about a roughly similar problem in trying to come up with a way to control nuclear weapons. He argued for world government but of course that was and remains problematic and also just seems to shift the problem.
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Having looked into it a bit more, it seems like Popper believed in checks and balances and frequent elections to make it easy to remove bad leaders. It also seems like he thought the US two-party system was superior to proportional representation.
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This is really dumb.
They just say âFounding Fathers in their infinite wisdom didnât ban machine guns, so itâs unconstitutional to ban them, the end.â This âlogicâ, of course, does not extend to anything that conservatives want to ban.
Nothing still matters donât worry. But I found this a bit interested. Thereâs also a mention on the Bush v. Gore 5-4 episode by one of the hosts, I think the main guy, about how he knew personally one of the clerks during that case and a couple of the justices (he didnât say which but we can probably figure it out) were just straight out rooting for Bush and openly said so amongst themselves. I guess at that time one of the clerksâ responsibilities was to pass notes between the justices or something.
Anyway
âSomethingâs rottenâ: Ex-Supreme Court clerk goes public with criticism of justices
This article is from 2000, but just kinda gets memory holed like so much other stuff. OâConnor had a sad when it looked like Florida might go for Gore. She ultimately didnât retire until years later, but it shows that she was definitely thinking about strategic retirement during the election and possibly during the decision.
Quoting two eyewitnesses, Newsweek said OâConnor then walked off to get a plate of food, and her husband, John, explained to friends and acquaintances that she was upset because they wanted to retire to Arizona and a Gore presidency meant they would have to wait another four years.
If itâs TOTAL IMMUNITY, maybe Joe can have him tied up Hannibal Lecter style for the debate.
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@clovis8 you can just ship the $50 to propublica; I think theyâve earned it with their reporting this year.
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Seems like everyone got tired of Thomasâ âgot to find the exact lawâ idea for gun control
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https://x.com/nycsouthpaw/status/1804160655739527258
A great example of how, once a text is produced, the owner no longer has exclusive control
Thomas is well-read, he understands how âdeath of the authorâ works.